On 09/10/2007, Martin Deutsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "AIUI, a large part of Sky's capacity problem is to do with their receivers still being built to more or less the same spec as when they launched in 1998. There are many things in them which could be done better, but Sky are obviously keen to keep the user experience identical to all their users, so haven't brought in features which might only work on newer boxes. "
There is provision in the system to allow software updates to particular models so it should in theory be possible to release an EPG update to the newer boxes only. I can however imagine that this would become a real headache to keep track of as there are quite a few different box variations now. Certainly for freeview there are more devices appearing which can be software updateable via ethernet, I know that Humax for one have a new PVR one coming out next year which includes this so perhaps that opens up the possibility of box manufacturers providing 'alternative' EPG's. On 10/10/2007, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Oh, boo hoo for BSkyB. It is they that made the commitment - if they need to swap out old Digiboxes to keep to their commitment, fine. Otherwise Ofcom should take away their licence to broadcast." 8.5 million subscribers at last look! That'll be a lot of replacement boxes, it would be nice but its not economical. On 10/10/2007, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "So many of them are not "real" channels, and there must be much data compression that can be gained from most of them being +1s." +1's don't save an awful lot, as they're an hour apart it doesn't help that much, I suppose it helps the statistical multiplexing (http://tinyurl.com/39ur9j) a little, which is used on a lot of channels to save bandwidth. Don't forget that BBC and ITV also have regional sub-channels as well which are wasting quite a lot of bandwidth when their not doing region specific content (although they are heavily compressed). Unfortunately nobody as yet has come up with a way of doing a seamless (ie no macro blocking/breaks in transmission) switch between a main feed (e.g ITV1) and a regional feed (e.g. ITV Meridian) and back on the set-top box end and so it has to be done before the content is compressed and sent out separately. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
